president obama giving the lawmakers here two options. one, to come up with their own alternative proposal. of course, that's something senate majority leader harry reid will work on. if not, he'll say put my plan to basic up or down vote. richard? >> kristen, i didn't hear much talk today about the sequester, big spending cuts people are talking about. didn't hear also about the debt creeling that tim geithner, the treasury secretary was saying we'd need to raise pretty much any day now. is this going to be the next couple of months in terms of this debate? does the white house have a strarjgy for dealing with both in the next face? >> well, they're quite clear that there's probably just too much at this point to put that in this initial package. specifically the debt ceiling. they're saying there's probably no way they're going to be able to address that right now. so they know they're going to have to deal with that and the tax hikes and spending cuts. you're absolutely right. in terms of strategy, if they have one, they haven't reveal